[sonitus mirus]

I have several very inexpensive HDMI cables ($6-$12) from Amazon and a Monoprice. The picture quality is noticeably more sharp and vivid with one of the cables vs the others. Yea, I know they're supposed to be all the same; when it comes to enjoying video content I use the one that looks best (it's so obvious, my children can easily see the difference). Frankly, one can discuss this for years, but to what end, if one chooses to disregard the first step in the Scientific Method and simply parrots what he was told?

 
It's no mystery that requires years of discussion.  HDMI cables of various materials and build qualities have been measured and tested.    Your anecdotal quip provides no credible evidence to suggest that an inexpensive HDMI cable cannot perform equally as well as any HDMI cable that costs significantly more.  All of your cables could be defective, even the one you prefer.  Maybe there is one bad cable in the bunch and you happen to prefer it over the others for some reason.  Perhaps that one cable is good and all the others are bad.  You have not provided any statistical information to even begin to support your experience.  We don't even know if the $6 cables are 3' or 25' long.  I have had some duds from both Amazon and Monoprice with various cables, but that is not the typical experience for me.  I'd be interested to know what might be contributing to a more vivid and sharp picture.  It's certainly not some, as of yet, undiscovered and unmeasurable property.

 

[Shaffer]

It's no mystery that requires years of discussion.  HDMI cables of various materials and build qualities have been measured and tested.    Your anecdotal quip provides no credible evidence to suggest that an inexpensive HDMI cable cannot perform equally as well as any HDMI cable that costs significantly more.  All of your cables could be defective, even the one you prefer.  Maybe there is one bad cable in the bunch and you happen to prefer it over the others for some reason.  Perhaps that one cable is good and all the others are bad.  You have not provided any statistical information to even begin to support your experience.  We don't even know if the $6 cables are 3' or 25' long.  I have had some duds from both Amazon and Monoprice with various cables, but that is not the typical experience for me.  I'd be interested to know what might be contributing to a more vivid and sharp picture.  It's certainly not some, as of yet, undiscovered and unmeasurable property.

I'm not trying to provide any evidence nor do I care to. My comment lead to the Scientific Process, which, ironically, is the last thing practiced on this board. Science. A fun word to say, a great trump card to spring on an unsuspecting noob, but a very difficult thing to comprehend (result-wise) without the methodology in place. In fact, the more you learn, the less you feel like you know. But, hey, you guys know it all. lol

I once asked this forum what was the highest level mathematics and/or physics course folks passed with an A-grade. Crickets. There's a shocker.

 

[Steve Eddy]

Most audio cables we would be talking about here are passing continuous-time (analog) signals, and any change in the electrical properties can and will change the signal. The cable is essentially adding a resistor between the source and transducer, so the signal might still get through, but it will be distorted.

Uh, what distortion is that exactly? What nonlinearity would be causing this distortion?

se

 

[Music Alchemist]

Most audio cables we would be talking about here are passing continuous-time (analog) signals, and any change in the electrical properties can and will change the signal. The cable is essentially adding a resistor between the source and transducer, so the signal might still get through, but it will be distorted.

Uh, what distortion is that exactly? What nonlinearity would be causing this distortion?

 
I don't know much about the technical stuff, but I can provide a good example. The stock cables of the Bose QuietComfort 15 have extra electronics in them and sound very distorted compared to normal headphone cables. Using a normal headphone cable costing less than a replacement stock cable results in dramatically better sound quality for that headphone.

 

[Steve Eddy]

I don't know much about the technical stuff, but I can provide a good example. The stock cables of the Bose QuietComfort 15 have extra electronics in them and sound very distorted compared to normal headphone cables. Using a normal headphone cable costing less than a replacement stock cable results in dramatically better sound quality for that headphone.

Well duh! Put electronics into something and it's a whole new ballgame. We're talking about cables. But you said that resistance caused distortion.

se

 

[nanaholic]

I'm not trying to provide any evidence nor do I care to. My comment lead to the Scientific Process, which, ironically, is the last thing practiced on this board. Science. A fun word to say, a great trump card to spring on an unsuspecting noob, but a very difficult thing to comprehend (result-wise) without the methodology in place. In fact, the more you learn, the less you feel like you know. But, hey, you guys know it all. lol

I once asked this forum what was the highest level mathematics and/or physics course folks passed with an A-grade. Crickets. There's a shocker.

 
You don't know what the scientific method is, so your "testimony" are quite meaningless.  The "I swap cables and see a difference!  Even my kids can see it!" doesn't not even come close to the scientific method, instead it's about as personal bias as you can get.
 
Also appealing to authority (ie if you didn't get a A in maths your opinion is worthless) is a logical fallacy.  The merit is in the theory itself, not the grade of the person stating such theory.  A person who gets an E for physics can state that gravity makes things falls towards the Earth and he will be equally correct to the person who got an A for saying the same thing.

 

[prot]

What's funny is that the cable deniers don't go out and buy some expensive cables and compare them, they just say "I don't believe in it" and  then try and convince everyone else they are a fool for spending the money.   I've never heard one guy say, I went out and spent $500 per pair on cables and purchased 3 different brands to hear if I heard a difference and I couldn't hear any difference at all.  Not once...

Oh the great "I dont know about it, therefore it does not exist" argument. Also, I heard those awful snakeoil-deniers called doctors never buy snakeoil either ... that surely means it is working

Anyway, here you go http://www.head-fi.org/t/729693/the-voodoo-less-cable-thread-reasonable-cable-vendors-and-reviews
And yes I did personally test more than 20 cables between $5 and $700 .. waste of time.

 

[lookingforIEMs]

I guess it also depends if your equipment is proficient enough to portray the differences between cables. I've heard many iems and headphones and tested different cables on both. You don't always get huge sonic differences but you can also get differences in detailing, soundstage and etc.

 

[superjawes]

Uh, what distortion is that exactly? What nonlinearity would be causing this distortion?

se

Chalk it up to me being sloppy. I really just meant that changing the resistance of the cable essentially changes the resistance of the load and could produce a measurable difference...if you had equipment sensitive enough to measure it. "Distortion" was the wrong word...sorry.

I once asked this forum what was the highest level mathematics and/or physics course folks passed with an A-grade. Crickets. There's a shocker.

This is relevant how? Anyone can have a desire to know how things work. Some audiophiles would prefer saving their money instead of spending more for buzzwords that make zero difference on the sound quality.

And I'd prefer not to develop a snooty superiority complex, but if you must see my "Scientific Credentials," I have a degree in electrical engineering, and that required several A-grades through high school and college.

 

[prot]

I guess it also depends if your equipment is proficient enough to portray the differences between cables. I've heard many iems and headphones and tested different cables on both. You don't always get huge sonic differences but you can also get differences in detailing, soundstage and etc.

From my exp it is exactly the other way around. If you have (more or less) easily audible diffs between cables, your playback chain has issues ... e.g. the two components connected by that cable have an input/output impedance mismatch.

 

[arnyk]

I guess it also depends if your equipment is proficient enough to portray the differences between cables. I've heard many iems and headphones and tested different cables on both. You don't always get huge sonic differences but you can also get differences in detailing, soundstage and etc.

 
There is no known equipment that is generally and reliably, as you say "proficient enough" to portray the audible differences between cables since those differences are well known by science to be generally inaudible.
 
Most of the perceptions of audible differences related to cables are based on extremely flawed listening evaluations that are so flawed that they can't even properly be called tests. These evaluations are well-known by science to be highly susceptible to false positives and false negatives. Conclusions based on them would be random noise but for the fact that the correct identity of the UUTs is clearly known on a second-by-second basis during the purported test. Since the identify of the UUT is well-known, that information can be misinterpreted by naive readers to lend crediblity to their results.

 

[lookingforIEMs]

From my exp it is exactly the other way around. If you have (more or less) easily audible diffs between cables, your playback chain has issues ... e.g. the two components connected by that cable have an input/output impedance mismatch.

And yet within the same chain of equipment, if I compare, say, a solid core silver DIYed IC and a Plussound Type 6 copper Litz I don't hear huge sonic differences however when I add in a DHC Fusion IC and a DHC Complement 4 IC into the mix, I hear that the fusion is very neutral in comparison to my first 2 ICs. And the complement 4 IC sounds crystal clear with huge bass in comparison to the first 2.


So here I have 4 different ICs. Two with miniscule differences and two with huge audible differences. I did not change anything else in my equipment chain. What is your explanation for this? I sound irritated and annoyed but I really am interested to know more about this impedance issue you speak of.

There is no known equipment that is generally and reliably, as you say "proficient enough" to portray the audible differences between cables since those differences are well known by science to be generally inaudible.

Most of the perceptions of audible differences related to cables are based on extremely flawed listening evaluations that are so flawed that they can't even properly be called tests. These evaluations are well-known by science to be highly susceptible to false positives and false negatives. Conclusions based on them would be random noise but for the fact that the correct identity of the UUTs is clearly known on a second-by-second basis during the purported test. Since the identify of the UUT is well-known, that information can be misinterpreted by naive readers to lend crediblity to their results.

I think my reply can reply yours too. And I DID demo all these ICs side by side. I didn't read about them beforehand.

 

[arnyk]

I'm not trying to provide any evidence nor do I care to. My comment lead to the Scientific Process, which, ironically, is the last thing practiced on this board. Science. A fun word to say, a great trump card to spring on an unsuspecting noob, but a very difficult thing to comprehend (result-wise) without the methodology in place. In fact, the more you learn, the less you feel like you know. But, hey, you guys know it all. lol

I once asked this forum what was the highest level mathematics and/or physics course folks passed with an A-grade. Crickets. There's a shocker.

 
I graduated with an BSE and aced all of my calculus, statistics, and analytical geometry courses. Similar results in post graduate school studying nonlinear differential equations, more statistics, mulitdimensional calculus and the like including some courses that were shared with PhD students.

 

[nanaholic]

And yet within the same chain of equipment, if I compare, say, a solid core silver DIYed IC and a Plussound Type 6 copper Litz I don't hear huge sonic differences however when I add in a DHC Fusion IC and a DHC Complement 4 IC into the mix, I hear that the fusion is very neutral in comparison to my first 2 ICs. And the complement 4 IC sounds crystal clear with huge bass in comparison to the first 2.


So here I have 4 different ICs. Two with miniscule differences and two with huge audible differences. I did not change anything else in my equipment chain. What is your explanation for this? I sound irritated and annoyed but I really am interested to know more about this impedance issue you speak of.
I think my reply can reply yours too. And I DID demo all these ICs side by side. I didn't read about them beforehand.

 
The most likely explanation is either a) it is completely and solely your brain playing tricks on you, or b) the IC had a significant difference in resistance leading to a volume difference which is perceived by your brain as being different in not just volume, but things like "neutral" or "soundstage" etc.
 
If you really are an EE degree holder, you should know that a sighted listening test (ie "by feel") isn't proof that a difference exists.  Measure it with oscilloscope and show it.  

EDIT:  I'm also an EE degree holder, and I specialized in analog and digital signal processing at that.  But then again as I said this shouldn't matter a single bit, as the merit of the argument lies in the theories themselves, not the person presenting them.

 

[Shaffer]

I graduated with an BSE and aced all of my calculus, statistics, and analytical geometry courses. Similar results in post graduate school studying nonlinear differential equations, more statistics, mulitdimensional calculus and the like including some courses that were shared with PhD students.

I asked about an A-grade. Regardless, Arn, I know you and simply do not believe a word you say. Your latest claim regarding speaking with JD only cements the idea. Sorry, but you've earned it.